


Come Disconnect the Dots

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 06:58:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13969746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: The house isn’t theirs anymore; they’ve been shipwrecked against the backdrop of their own lives. But Frankie doesn’t let go.A story in which Grace and Frankie hold hands, figure it out, and stay mad.





	Come Disconnect the Dots

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to kathryne for a phenomenal beta. Your thoughtfulness, sharp insights, enthusiasm, care for timelines and structure, and investment in the details are what allowed this story to be what it is.
> 
> And thanks to ellydash for telling me about VinDiego when I needed a festival, and for explaining what Californians say when they donate pot to a pal.

-

_Everything we broke today  
Needed breaking anyway_

_— from “Bullet Proof” by This Is The Kit_

-

When Frankie takes her hand, for an instant Grace is convinced they can stretch this moment out forever. Some part of them will always live on this beach, their beautiful broken house standing behind them like it’s still their champion. And while it’s true that Grace will be able to call up this memory for the rest of her life, will frequently imagine she can hold this turning point in her palm like a paperweight, the moment itself lasts only briefly. The day wanes, the sky changes, and there’s the question of where they’re going to sleep tonight. The house isn’t theirs anymore; they’ve been shipwrecked against the backdrop of their own lives. But Frankie doesn’t let go.

-

The rush of freedom is overwhelming, but the details creep in almost right away. On one hand, the decision to leave—to choose each other, to realize they already had, to say it out loud—is the only thing that matters. Their escape and their choice ribbon around Grace, fold her in broad swaths of happiness. On the other hand, they have nothing of value with them besides a half-charged iPhone (Grace) and $17 in cash (Frankie). 

From here, they’ll need a short-term and a long-term roof over their heads. They’ll need—no later than tomorrow, preferably—to be reunited with wallets and medications, the hundred or so vibrators currently in the apartment, their printer and shipping labels, their laptops. For the first time ever, Grace considers temporarily suspending orders on the website, but she silences that thought. She managed only yesterday to get a big shipment out, and a day away shouldn’t jeopardize any pending orders. They’ll need the car (they sold Frankie’s, but Grace’s is paid off and she’ll drive it into the ground if she has to), and their furniture; they’ll need or want a thousand other things they can’t even think of right now. They’ll need to break their lease at Walden Villas. They’ll need to learn all they can about the sale of the house and its impact to their finances, and Grace may need to talk to Frankie about revoking Bud’s power of attorney. They’ll need to work very, very hard to disentangle themselves from a mess that isn’t their fault.

“I can’t go back right now,” Grace says. She takes her hand from Frankie, shifts in her chair to better look at her. “I know we have to get our stuff and...put it somewhere else. But not today.”

“Amen, sister.”

For now, they leave their contraband from Walden Villas sitting on their Adirondack chairs, a clue for anyone who might like one. Grace is aware of trying not to look too hard at the house as they walk past it to get to the road. Part of her wants to know if contractors have replaced the piping and repaired the kitchen ceiling, but a bigger part of her doesn’t want to think about it right now. In the last two months, the kids stopped sharing those types of details, and she and Frankie stopped asking questions.

When they make it to the street, Grace distracts herself from some truly searing knee pain by using the Priceline app to book a room with two queen beds at the La Jolla Sheraton, then the Lyft app to order a car to take them to the Trader Joe’s near the hotel—she can use Apple Pay there, buy some dinner and booze and basic toiletries. 

While they wait for the car, she dials Walden Villas and—for once—makes Frankie do the talking. Neither of them are afraid to say what they think, but Frankie, unabashed and loose and free, doesn’t bargain when she’s not in the mood. Yes, Frankie explains, they have left, yes, they are safe, yes, they suppose there’s nothing they can do to prevent the receptionist from calling their children, but there’s no point in looking for them, and they’ll handle the details through a lawyer. It’s sad that “lawyer” no longer means Sol or Robert or Bud, but not that sad. Mostly it’s infuriating.

They settle in their room with salad and trail mix and a bottle of pinot noir, and eat their dinner perched on the edge of one of the beds. For most of the meal, Frankie holds Grace’s hand; it makes eating logistically difficult, but it’s also the thing that makes it possible for her to stay seated upright, to finish her dinner, to leave some wine in the bottle for tomorrow.

-

 _You’re about 30 minutes away from your very own Silver Alert_ , Brianna texts after Grace fails to answer her call for the third time. Her composed tone betrays the emptiness of the threat: Walden Villas has already called her, otherwise she wouldn’t know they were gone. 

_We’re safe. Please leave us alone_ , Grace types. She hits send, then powers down her phone entirely, the modern-day version of a door closing. She eases herself up from the bed to rummage in the Trader Joe’s bag for their weird toothbrushes and toothpaste and soap, a face lotion she’s never used before; she feels grimy, almost itchy with the desire to be clean. It’s unfortunate that she’ll have to put the day’s clothes back on after her shower, but it can’t be helped. 

In the end, all they do with their first night of freedom is rest together on one of the beds and watch TV. Grace sits with her left knee crooked at an angle that takes some of the pressure off, and Frankie touches her right knee, the one that’s been replaced, with the very edges of her fingertips. “Does this knee know it has to up its game now?”

Grace laughs. “I haven’t sat it down and told it.” She puts her hand over her knee cap, bumps into Frankie’s fingers there. “It’s doing okay.” The incision has healed well, though it still looks angry. Frankie’s been curious about the scar; she saw it on the day of surgery, of course, but she’s asked to see it a few times since. Grace has always let her. But other than when she’s exercising or testing her knee’s limits or glancing down at it in the shower, Grace doesn’t often think about its foreignness anymore. 

After Grace nudges Frankie’s fingers a few more times, Frankie’s hand settles over hers. It’s supposed to be calming, Grace reminds herself when her stomach leaps at the touch.

-

In the morning, it takes a few seconds for Grace to orient herself, to remember the hotel, the day before, the reason behind the exhaustion in her limbs, the tightness in her right knee and the profound throbbing in the left. She shifts in bed to check if Frankie’s still asleep in hers, thinking she might finally be able to get payback for all those photos Frankie takes of her sleeping. But Frankie’s awake, sitting stiff and upright. “Morning,” Frankie says. “This fucking sucks.”

What is there to say? The night before, she laid awake for hours, and the more she thought about what had happened, the more she concluded that the kids were the ones who should feel ashamed. And yet she still feels embarrassed and cautious and out-of-sorts. This moment isn’t her fault, but what about all the parts that are? “I know,” Grace says. “I’m sorry. But—this is better than the home, right?”

“Oh my God, of course it is.”

As extraordinary as the day is, it unfolds more naturally than the previous. Grace has had Arlene’s son’s number in her phone since their earliest days in Walden Villas. Arlene has—as they say—“good days” and “bad days,” and Grace preferred calling Scott over pushing a big blue button. She used to wonder, sometimes, why she felt so sad about her own children but was willing to sell out Arlene to her son. There’s an answer to that question now.

When she calls Scott this time, it’s to ask for a favor she and Frankie might never be able to repay. Scott agrees to visit his mother, to keep her calm and explain that her friends had to move away and convince her to give him Grace and Frankie’s spare key, the one Frankie had illegally made during a field trip to a shopping center. He dutifully writes down the items he needs to retrieve: their wallets, Frankie’s phone, their pills, Grace’s cane and knee braces, both laptops, a few changes of clothes, cosmetics, and as many vibrators as he can manage.

“For our business, obviously,” Grace says as she dictates this final item on the list, absolutely refusing to blush. It occurs to her that this is several levels up from asking one’s husband to pick up tampons at the store, a marital rite of passage from which she spared Robert entirely. “We have shipments to mail.” She’ll buy more shipping labels when she’s running errands today, will simply have to handwrite addresses for a few days. It’s simpler than explaining the whole Vybrant set-up to Scott.

Frankie waves frantically, as if there’s a chance she wouldn’t have Grace’s attention as the only object in motion in a small hotel room. “Underwear!” she hisses. “PJs!” 

Grace covers the mouthpiece with her hand. “We will use the _money_ in our _wallets_ to buy underwear and pajamas,” she says through clenched teeth. “Nope, I’m still here. Thank you so much, Scott. Oh, and the car keys are on the hook near the door.” 

Scott works quickly. He loads their stuff into Grace’s car, drives it to the hotel, loads everything into their room, then calls a cab to take him back to his own vehicle in the Walden Villas parking lot. “You’re sure about all this?” he asks as Grace and Frankie wait with him at the curb.

Frankie speaks first. “We’re sure.” 

“You were right to move your mom there,” Grace says. “I understand that now. But—”

“—our kids are shitheads,” Frankie finishes. “You aren’t, but they are. Though it might be a temporary affliction.” She shrugs. “It wasn’t right. We weren’t ready.”

Scott nods and heaves a sigh. “Okay, ladies.”

“Thank you,” Grace says. Scott treats Arlene like she’s gold. He wouldn’t have helped them if it was the wrong thing to do. 

“We might rob a bank next week,” says Frankie. “If you wanna keep aiding and abetting.” The cab pulls up, and she throws her arms around Scott. “That hug’s for your mom.” Another. “That one’s for you.”

Grace didn’t expect to feel jealous of Scott today, or any day ever, but a burst of envy shoots through her. Then Frankie pulls away so he can get in the backseat, and they stand waving together as the cab fades into the distance. Frankie runs her thumb against the side of Grace’s free hand as if she can’t think of anything else to do, as if she’s all touch, all energy. “I have a feeling our underwear doesn’t normally come from the same store,” Frankie says. “Does that end today?”

-

“Did you want to see anything bigger? A unit with two bedrooms, more common spaces?” The property manager, a blonde named Brenda, glances down at her tablet, already scrolling through more spacious possibilities. “For when the grandkids are in town, or—” Brenda looks at the two of them, seems to re-think an assumption. “—or when it’s time to throw a party.” 

They were supposed to start with a tour of a two-bedroom; Grace is certain she checked the correct box on the online form, and it isn’t entirely clear why they started here in the first place. But when Brenda led them into the living room of the one-bedroom and they realized what was happening, Frankie shrugged at Grace and Grace shrugged back and they followed her inside without saying a word. The shrug might have been about money—they need to save as much of it as possible during this interim period. Buying beachfront property in La Jolla in 2018 with fewer than three-and-a-half incomes is entirely out of the question, but Grace has already has a mental list of more attainable San Diego neighborhoods. For now, they just need a place to land.

Still, Grace can think of plenty of reasons why it would be nice to have two bedrooms: privacy, space to think, room for Frankie to paint, a place to make Vybrant-related phone calls and prevent the packaging operation from taking over the whole apartment. And the obvious: a room for them each to sleep. But before she’s done sorting through the reasons, Frankie says “We won’t be having any visitors” in a flat, deadened tone. Grace thought they’d both been at least a little excited to view this apartment, to move forward, but the exhaustion in Frankie’s voice covers the room like a shroud.

“This is fine,” Grace says. It’s a second floor apartment, but there’s an elevator in the building. The walls are clean and white. There’s a breakfast nook, hardwood floors, a tiny balcony with sliding doors and a parking lot view. If she doesn’t think about the view she’s given up, everything that’s fallen apart, she could probably be happy here.

It’s only later, when Frankie has to let go of her hand so they can get into the car, that Grace realizes why Brenda seemed to think of a second bedroom only in the context of guests.

-

Frankie’s attorney friend Amanda reviews the terms of their Walden Villas residency termination. When they’re convinced there’s no loophole designed to trap them in the home for the rest of their days, they go back. First they sit for a few minutes in the parked car, collecting themselves. Grace glances at Frankie; she looks blanched, and her hands rest in curled half-fists in her lap. “It’s okay,” Grace says, leaning over to pat her nearest hand. “Sooner we go in, sooner we’re out for good.” 

A staff member—Katie, the one whose girlfriend made her get Invisalign, and Grace cannot wait to permanently forget every detail she’s collected here—hovers for the entire day they spend packing up, but she has no more right to impede their progress than Grace and Frankie have a right to damage the facility. In the afternoon, the J. Griffin & Son moving company arrives to haul the boxes and most of their furniture to the apartment. They’ll take what doesn’t fit to a storage unit they’ve rented near the complex. Once they collect Frankie’s paintings from the small storage unit the kids rented for them two months ago, everything—less than before, but everything—will be in one of two places again, in manageable order. They’ll get the paintings some other day, once everything else has had time to settle.

“This is cool,” says the gangly younger Griffin, looking around as he hoists a dining room chair in each arm. “In all the times we’ve been here, we never moved anybody out.”

Frankie looks up from the penis sculpture she’s bubble-wrapping and utters a well-timed “Yeah, no shit.”

The sound Grace tries and fails to stifle is half amused chuckle, half narrow escape from death. 

The elder Griffin sighs. “Shut up, Jacob Junior.” 

It’s as if there’s a force field around the empty apartment; when it’s time to drive away, no one comes to say goodbye, not even Arlene. Katie waves until they’re gone, the blank expression on her face betraying only a little of the relief she probably feels. 

-

On their first night in the new apartment, Grace takes the couch. They’ve agreed to switch off, and the couch is pretty comfortable, but she wishes she had her own bedroom anyway. She’s fickle: it’s lonely in the living room, watching how the cars coming and going from the parking lot splash light on the ceiling, and yet she wants to be more alone, wants a dark room with a shut door.

She falls asleep eventually, because when she wakes up, she’s already crying. It’s such a betrayal, to have to cry without realizing it was coming. This is a small apartment; as hard-of-hearing as Frankie is, she hears. She sits on the edge of a couch cushion, finds one of Grace’s hands and presses it between both of her own. “What’s the matter?”

The memory of what she was dreaming contains no plot, only ocean. Inventing a nightmare, a story that might make sense, seems like too much work. She takes a deep breath, forces herself to breathe out normally and without crying. “I’m so homesick,” she says. She smiles as if to show she’s aware of how ridiculous she’s being. “Subconsciously. I just woke up.”

Frankie dips her thumb into the space between Grace’s thumb and forefinger, rubs a soothing pattern. “Come lay down with me,” she says, standing up and pulling at Grace’s arm. “I’ll talk to you until you fall back asleep.”

“That’s not how it works,” Grace says, but she grins and follows Frankie down the short hallway to the bedroom, feeling for some reason like a kid who’s getting away with something. 

Frankie gets her settled, gives her personal space, only chatters long enough for Grace to move safely back from the cliff edge of tears. She falls asleep first, and once again, Grace follows, the second half of her rest oceanless and still. It isn’t even awkward when they wake up, but the next night, when Grace has the bed, she doesn’t invite Frankie to join her. 

-

Frankie has stopped talking about Faith. 

At first, Grace didn’t notice. Everything about Frankie was a little diminished at Walden Villas, and Bud and Allison’s brief visits with Faith in tow were a far cry from the adventures Frankie had imagined for herself and her granddaughter. It made sense that Frankie didn’t chatter away for hours leading up to those subdued supervised interactions, or follow them up with a play-by-play for Grace. Grace was always there, too, preferring time with the Bergstein-Giampietro-Smikowitzes to the crafting bees and shuffleboard and cafeteria gossip lurking just beyond the walls of the apartment. 

But now they’ve been in their new place for a week, have made it very clear that they’re not ready to interact with their family yet, and Grace is fixated on Frankie’s silence about Faith. When Frankie loves, she can’t shut up about it. Frankie spills her love everywhere; it’s like secondhand smoke everyone around her can’t help but inhale. It’s the reason Grace knows so much about traditional burrito ingredients from a variety of regions, and how jellybeans are made, and why quokkas are superior among all macropods, and where different pigments come from. It’s why, for a while, before Santa Fe, Grace heard a lot about yams and Dizzy Gillespie and Jacob’s adorable indecisiveness as to whether to purchase new waders for farm work: he needed them, but it was so close to retirement. And if he went for it, they should be green or brown?

Grace doesn’t care about any of that stuff, not really, but she has to admit that Frankie is one of the main reasons she knows as much as she does about herself. Grace has always inspired attention and opinions, but until Frankie, she’s never been so observed, so remarked upon. Frankie’s insults are so deserved, and her questions are so intuitive, that Grace can’t help but accept Frankie’s compliments as truth, too. 

Now there’s this silence, so obvious once it finally hits her. They’re watching a commercial that’s an endless row of baby after baby. Just as Grace rolls her eyes at the reveal that it’s just an ad for T-Mobile, she hears an intake of breath and glances to her right. Frankie’s crying. It’s Faith, of course it is. Faith made breaking up with Jacob unfortunate instead of devastating. She made it easy for Frankie to leave Santa Fe. And now it’s clear that Frankie isn’t only depressed because of this apartment, this isolation from her past life—there’s something very specific that she needs and isn’t allowed to have anymore. 

One of the last times they saw Faith before Frankie almost drove her to Mexico, they took her to the library together, and when she was obviously too young for storytime, they strolled her around and Frankie had them take turns recapping the plots of their favorite books. “Grace, give her another recommendation,” Frankie said whenever Grace stopped talking. “She’s absorbing everything we say.”

Before Faith was born, Frankie made them stay up late making lists of good songs, terrified they might forget to expose Faith to some crucial sound. “Nobody wants a playlist from their grandma,” Grace said, but Frankie was undeterred. 

“Okay,” Grace says as Frankie cries. “Okay.” She can’t prefix the _okay_ with _It’s going to be_ , not with any real authority or confidence. All she can do is squeeze Frankie’s hand and promise herself she’s going to try.

-

The overhead light fixture in their living room requires six small, strangely-shaped light bulbs; it’s an unusual, impractical choice for an apartment complex. There weren’t any bulbs in the fixture when they moved in, and when they’re sick enough of the dim lamplight to do something about it, Frankie balances on a dining room chair, Grace hovering nervously below, and screws in one of the bulbs from a package left behind in the linen closet. The wattage is correct, but the light quality is all wrong: the bulbs are the “cool white” kind that glow a nauseating green. 

Which is why, early on a Thursday evening, they’re waiting for a Home Depot employee to return with a tool so he can fetch the multi-pack of teardrop-shaped “soft white” bulbs from the very top shelf. Frankie smiles at Grace, nudges her side, takes her hand. This affection is classic cause-and-effect; she’s just told Frankie they can order pizza and pick it up on their way home. 

Then, looking down at their joined hands, Grace has a brief out of body experience. It turns out the image of herself holding hands with Frankie Bergstein in the light bulb aisle at Home Depot is the gayest thing she’s seen in her entire life. And she’s been to Robert’s awful plays. But it’s too late to let go, she tells herself. Frankie has been so sad. It’s better to give this impression to the world than to give Frankie the impression she’s anything less than all in on the promise of pizza and better light. 

-

Grace makes an offer; Bud turns it down. When his email arrives, Grace is in the living room with Frankie, already looking down at her phone. She stands abruptly, closes herself in the bedroom to read. 

Bud is sympathetic to Frankie’s feelings, he explains, but he offers some counterpoints: he doesn’t know the status of his mother’s health. He doesn’t know their current address. His feelings about Faith’s safety are the same. Even if Frankie is no longer “legally deceased,” where’s the proof that anything has changed? 

Damn it. 

“Everything okay?” Frankie asks when Grace returns. Grace realizes that she hasn’t brought anything back from the bedroom, or changed into pajamas, or provided any obvious reason for her trip out of the room.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, lowering herself back down onto the couch. After everything, she’s careful not to lie to Frankie; she is fine, or at least she will be. Somewhere in Bud’s no is an cracked window, and she’s going to crawl in. 

There’s a bowl of popcorn in Frankie’s lap. Frankie’s hand hovers over it; she’s clearly performing the ritual in which she selects her next ten kernels according to criteria Grace will never fully understand. Grace doesn’t wait for her to finish. She plunges her hand into the bowl, where it collides with Frankie’s, and grabs a handful for herself.

-

The storage unit containing Frankie’s paintings isn’t climate-controlled. It’s a million degrees inside, and some of the paintings are stacked facing each other, sticky and ruined in the heat. “No,” Frankie mutters, spinning slowly in place, taking in the damage. “No, no, no.”

Grace is glad she doesn’t know which of the kids rented this unit and loaded in Frankie’s work without, apparently, sparing a thought for packing materials, for conservation. If she knew, the restrained, quiet part of this estrangement would be over. She’d be on the way to the culprit’s house, ready to scream. As it stands, it’s a Sunday and the office is closed, so they can’t even cancel their contract with this unit today. Grace makes a mental note to see if they can cancel online. 

Frankie stacks everything into the back of the car, waving off Grace’s offer to put down her cane and help. “We can put everything in our storage unit for now,” Frankie says. “I’ll deal with it later.” They’d loaded the back of the car with old bed sheets and strips of muslin, folded down the backseat to make room, and Frankie tries her best to create a stable nest for the mess of paintings. 

“I guess I thought I’d convinced everyone it isn’t just a hobby,” Frankie says as Grace pulls out of the parking lot. “That I could be serious about something. Does doing something every day for thirty years count as serious?”

“I think so,” says Grace. 

Grace intentionally misses the exit for their other, better storage unit, but Frankie doesn’t seem to notice until she rolls to a stop in the parking lot of Frankie’s favorite frozen yogurt shop. 

“I’m not seven,” Frankie says.

“I’ll have some, too,” says Grace, trying to keep the bargaining-with-a-seven-year-old tone out of her voice. It works: Frankie hops out of the car as soon as Grace puts it in park. 

For entirely different reasons, it’s a challenge for both of them to make a selection from the dozens of options, but Grace doesn’t realize they’re in the way until a little boy darts around her, clips his foot on her cane, and nearly falls. A hand yanks him back to his spot behind Grace and Frankie. “Tommy!” says the voice belonging to the hand. “Darling. You have to wait. These nice ladies are _still deciding_.”

Grace turns to look. Tommy’s mother is all athleisure wear and tasteful gold jewelry, her tiny body a grimace. She’s a perfect stranger, but Grace knows her and hates her. She smiles a fake apology at Grace, and Frankie’s arm encircles Grace immediately. Even though she’s holding her empty yogurt cup, Grace automatically reaches to join Frankie’s hand where it grips her arm. 

“You go on ahead,” Grace says, stepping backward. 

“Thanks,” says Tommy’s mom. “Just trying to keep things moving.” 

“Fabulous,” says Frankie. “We’ll console ourselves by being incredibly, incredibly happy.” It might not make sense to anyone else, but it’s the perfect thing to say. A second ago, Grace was miserable; now her face flushes with a pride she isn’t sure belongs to her. 

“This shit would never happen if Brian still worked here,” Frankie says when they’ve finally chosen and paid and sat down at a table. 

_I’m Brianna_ , Grace hears at the mention of Brian’s name, the memory so immediate it could have happened yesterday. _That’s, like, the same name, but without the ‘na._ She swallows a cold mouthful: tart plain yogurt and a little non-fat chocolate from where the edges of the flavors melt together, chocolate sprinkles, a few of those little fruit bubbles that explode when you push on them with your tongue. She wishes Brianna was here, misses her so much it hurts. She’s so, so angry at her, doesn’t know how she can ever stop feeling that way, but she wants this indulgence to include her. She doesn’t want to go back in time, but if she could visit some past moment just briefly, fix it in some lasting way, bring her back here? She would. She absolutely would. 

\- 

Grace has never hid her prescriptions from Frankie, but in this tiny apartment with no privacy, Frankie seems to have a lot more opinions about them. She convinces Grace to commit to an hour of melatonin before taking an Ambien. She preaches the RICE method for dealing with Grace’s bad knee. At least twice a day, she cheerleader-shouts “Rest! Ice! Compress! Elevate!”, wielding the ice pack like a pom-pom. If the pain’s still bad after RICE, Frankie lets her have a pain pill. Maybe. But then she makes her wait hours before she can have any alcohol, and it’s almost more trouble than it’s worth. 

This new approach is far too absorbing to count as moderation; moderation involves a nonchalance that Grace is pretty sure she’ll never have. But there’s a certain virtue—itself a drug—in the flames of pain in her knee, the shock of the ice, the longed-for and waited-for after-dinner martini, the natural hormone to send her calmly to sleep, Frankie watching it all more openly than she ever did before. 

Maybe it’s Frankie’s new openness that makes her so good at knowing exactly when to invite Grace to bed. On Grace’s couch nights, Frankie waits until Grace’s knee is cold and numb and sleep is just starting to nudge at the edges of her consciousness. Then she sticks her head out of the bedroom door and calls “Come to bed, Grace,” the mundane entreaty of a wife. Grace always listens, always trudges in to join her. Sometimes she wishes she possessed this skill of Frankie’s, the ability to make a plainspoken request. She makes do with excuses and implications, ends up alone about half the nights she’s entitled to the bed.

Tonight, Grace turns to Frankie when she’s settled, says something she’d meant to say earlier, when they took Frankie’s damaged paintings to their storage unit: “I wonder if there’s a conservator at San Diego State, somebody who could give you advice about your paintings.” She yawns and pulls the comforter so it bundles beneath her chin.

Frankie reaches for Grace’s hands, pulls until her fingers relax their grip on the bedding. “Maybe,” she says. “That’s a good idea.” She presses her thumbs into Grace’s palms, and Grace works hard not to sigh. 

After a pause, Frankie speaks again. “Grace,” she says, still working on Grace’s hands. “You haven’t given the kids our address, have you?” It’s a question related to their previous conversation, even if a few of the connectors have gone unsaid. 

“No.” 

“Good,” she says. “I don’t want them to know where we live.” 

Grace agrees. Then it comes to her: this is her opening with Bud. This is what she’ll use—part of what she’ll use—to get Frankie some time with Faith. She isn’t sleepy anymore, and she already knows the melatonin isn’t going to cut it tonight, though it usually does. She won’t take an Ambien. She’ll lie awake long past when Frankie falls asleep and drops the grip on her hands, and use this time to plan.

-

Frankie’s taking herself on a date to the beach, sketchbook in hand. “I’ll be gone at least three hours,” she says. The careful, thoughtful phrasing isn’t Grace’s imagination. The words are a code, necessary in this small shared space, and she extends the same courtesy to Frankie whenever she can. 

Grace gives herself the dignity of waiting five minutes after Frankie’s been gone before she grabs the lube from the fridge and unearths her vibrator from her underwear drawer. She spreads a blanket on top of the bed because she’d feel guilty otherwise, shucks off everything below the waist but leaves her shirt on.

She preps the vibe and turns it to its lowest setting. Like clockwork, she closes her eyes, anticipatory relief already coursing through her, and it doesn’t take long before she needs to press the button again, speed things up. Lately she’s been imagining walking on the beach, the only person in sight. She stumbles upon a gazebo. There’s a comfortable bench with cushions, and probably no one can see in, and then he’s there, some nameless shapeless guy. Getting fucked in a gazebo by a guy who’s actually a vibrator—it’s the perfect scenario. 

But today her brain keeps pushing her out of the gazebo and back to this bed. They changed the sheets last night, and the bed is clean-smelling and soft, warm even though she isn’t under the covers. Frankie left it only an hour or so ago, and for all their troubles with the lights in the living room, the natural light in here is perfect. The sun holds her in place. And this isn’t a vibrator, this is a hand, a hand that’s always touching her, oh no, no no no, and there isn’t time to get this one back under control. When she comes, the orgasm is indistinguishable from being in bed with Frankie, this bed, in this limbo of an apartment, a setting her body has learned to want. 

-

It takes a half-dozen emails for Grace and Bud to arrive at an agreement, which Bud converts to PDF and sends to Grace for an electronic signature. 

Grace agrees to take care of pick-up and drop-off, to use Bud’s vehicle when she’s transporting Faith so they don’t have to install the baby car seat in Grace’s car, to be entirely sober, to be willing to submit to drug testing or a breathalyzer if Bud or Allison determine its necessity, to check in at least three times per hour with photographic evidence that Faith is safe and well cared for, to ensure that Frankie doesn’t drive Faith anywhere, to keep an eye on Frankie and Faith the entire time they’re together. When Grace picks up Faith, she will leave Bud and Allison with a sealed envelope containing her and Frankie’s address. 

Bud and Allison agree to let Grace take Faith for two hours on Saturday morning, transportation time included. If Grace, and by extension Frankie, hold up their end of the bargain, the envelope with their address stays sealed shut and Grace can take it home with her. If anything goes even slightly wrong—a minute’s lateness, failure to send a photo—Bud will open the envelope and know where they live.

Grace feels like a character in an overwrought police procedural. The formality should be too ridiculous to be believed—except it isn’t. Grace was willing to give up quite a lot to gain this inch; she hopes Bud never knows how much more she’d have done if pressed. As she signs, she thinks of Frankie in bed a few nights before, asking her to keep their information protected. To keep them safe. She thinks of Frankie massaging her hands. 

She’s determined to ensure Bud won’t have cause to open the envelope. The envelope is the reason Bud agreed to let them watch Faith; her belief that it will stay shut, that she can help Frankie see Faith without betraying their privacy, is the reason she put the option on the table at all. For Grace, Frankie is the only person who can complete a room. But no matter how much Frankie needs Grace, for her there’s something missing from those same rooms. It’s worth risking the envelope, Grace thinks. She sends back the signed agreement, shuts her laptop, and goes to join Frankie on their little balcony. 

\- 

Grace tightens the sash on her blue and white robe and walks down the hallway, hand skimming the wall in case she needs the support. She grins when she gets to the threshold of the living room; Frankie’s drawing in the Sudoku book somebody gave Grace when she was recovering from knee surgery, filling in the squares not with numbers but with an elaborate cross-hatched checkerboard.

“Do you want a chapter?” Grace asks.

Frankie looks up, eyebrows raised. “Is this the thing where I get in bed with you and you read for thirty seconds and I pretend to fall asleep and you pretend to be annoyed that you can’t move my dead weight and then we actually do fall asleep?”

Yes. Grace scowls. “Do you want a chapter or not?”

“Of course I want a chapter.”

They’re on chapter four of _Commonwealth_ —or rather, Grace is. Four excuses, or invitations. She saves this novel for the nights she gets the bed, reads a few pages to Frankie, then stays awake long enough to finish the chapter silently, long enough for the melatonin to kick in. They’re lengthy chapters—after tonight, there are only five left.

Frankie slides into bed first, watches Grace shut the blinds a bit more fully, toss a stray sock of Frankie’s into the hamper. Grace remembers that beneath the robe, she’s wearing only a t-shirt with some silk pajama pants. It’s been warm, and on some level she must have known when she changed for bed that Frankie would be here, but she hadn’t anticipated Frankie staring at her with such intensity. Frankie’s seen her like this—t-shirt, no makeup, worn out by the day—countless times, but a gaze this focused is something Grace is used to dressing up to receive.

“What?” Grace says, standing frozen at the foot of the bed.

“Nothing.”

Grace pulls the sash and lets the robe drop into her hands, turns away to set it on a nearby chair. She peels back the covers and sits down in the bed, and Frankie’s hand lands on the middle of her back. They stay like that for their pages, Grace managing to keep her voice steady as Frankie scratches gently through the thin grey cotton. 

After nine or ten pages, Frankie’s fingers haven’t stopped moving. She interrupts. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

Grace looks down at her with a smile. “Well, normally you’re asleep three pages in, but I keep going.” She waves the book at Frankie, showing off her progress. Frankie stills her fingers, presses her hand flat against Grace’s back. 

“You kissed my forehead,” Frankie says. “The night you read to me from that tax book.” 

Grace’s face goes hot. “I’d missed you. You were home...and you were supposed to be asleep.”

“I was, but I could feel it.” 

She could do it again, again but better, could lie down and pull Frankie close and kiss her forehead, see where the silent promise takes them. Something stops her: Frankie isn’t joking now, but eventually she always uses humor to create a boundary that separates them from the tension. Unlike Grace, Frankie seems to have no trouble asking for or implying what she wants, but then she undercuts it with a joke that makes Grace lose her confidence. _Can’t or won’t._

Grace clears her throat. “Should I keep reading?” But she knows, of course she knows, that this book won’t last forever; no opportunity does. Night after next, even with five chapters left as insurance, she’ll try not using it, will try to say _Come to bed, Frankie_ instead. 

“Yeah,” Frankie says. “I like Ann Patchett better than tax preparation, even if she puts me to sleep, too.” Frankie curls up on her side, close to Grace but facing away from her, the way she often falls asleep. When she scoots backward, wedging herself even closer to where Grace sits, Grace decides. She’ll reach for Frankie’s hand. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, she reminds herself, and she can survive being teased for it. Frankie doesn’t say anything when the touch lands, only grabs Grace’s hand tightly, pulls it close to her chest.

The heat hasn’t left her cheeks. If anything, it’s spread. Desire—because there’s a word for everything, and desire is the word for this, and there’s no point in turning away from it, no hope of dissipation—is something flying in her chest, a fist in her stomach, a warm ache between her legs. And while she wants to be touched in those places, she wants it without thinking about it, because she’s thinking about what it would mean to find those places on Frankie, to seek out not only her hands but everywhere else, to be the hand or the arm or the person Frankie links not only to her own comfort, but to her own desires. To be the subject, not the object.

After a few more pages, Frankie’s breathing changes, even and slow. Grace doesn’t keep reading. She marks the page and sets the book aside, turns out the light and lies down, taking back the hand holding Frankie’s so she can wrap her right arm around her, find her hand again. 

-

On Saturday morning, the thoughts she’s held at bay this week bombard Grace all at once. She believes without question that Bud will hold up his end of the terms on their signed agreement, but what if he’s also invited all the kids to be there when Grace arrives? What if they ambush her with demands for information, or, even worse, with explanations for their behavior, excuses she doesn’t want to hear? What if everything goes according to plan when Grace picks up Faith, but they get stuck in traffic and Frankie barely has any time with her? What if she’s late bringing Faith back because Frankie does something unpredictable, not understanding the high stakes? 

When she’s almost ready to leave, Grace checks for the third time to make sure her flask isn’t in her purse—no need to raise false suspicions if anyone sees—and the envelope containing their address is. She glances warily at her cane, which currently rests against the chair by the door. She should use it today, she knows she should. It makes her knee hurt less. It makes her more stable. It allows her to take fewer pills, helps her remember to do her physical therapy exercises, remember to pace herself so she doesn’t twist in some ridiculous way and re-injure what’s already been damaged. Because she doesn’t yet know if she’ll need surgery on this knee, she isn’t sure how long she’ll need the cane. For as long as she does, it will continue to improve her life. But if Bud or any of the kids see her with it, she’s pretty sure they’ll think _she needs help_ , which is so unfair, because she already has help, in the form of the cane. 

She can hold a baby in one arm and a cane in the other. And, on top of everything else she’s putting herself through today, she doesn’t deserve an extra-painful knee. She grabs the cane and glances back at Frankie, who’s having cereal and coffee in the breakfast nook. “I’ll be back really soon,” she says, “so don’t go anywhere.”

“Okay,” Frankie says, a little testily. This isn’t the first time Grace has reminded her to stay put. Frankie probably thinks she’s bringing her a donut.

Bud is holding Faith when he answers the door; no one else appears to be around. He’s all business, barely greeting Grace before handing her a diaper bag and giving her the rundown on the bottles, diapers, and toys inside. Grace spends a few seconds trying to figure out if Bud’s fixating on her cane before telling herself to pay attention to the baby instructions and forget about everything else. When he’s done with his instructions, Bud walks outside with her, still carrying Faith, and buckles her into the car seat himself, telling his daughter goodbye with a forehead kiss. Grace knows she should thank him, but she can’t. She gives him the envelope, along with reassurances she’ll have Faith back by 11:30.

Faith is quiet in the car. There’s a mirror on her car seat, aimed at her face so it’s visible when the driver of the car looks in the rearview mirror. At a red light about halfway home, Grace tries to make eye contact. “Remember me? I’m Grace. We’re gonna go see your estranged grandma today, and hopefully she won’t try to kidnap you!” She pauses, accelerates when the light turns green. “She gave you your name, which is a name like mine.” Grace glances in the mirror again. Faith yawns. “We should be glad we didn’t get any of the really awful virtues, like Patience or Chastity.” 

After that, Grace stops talking. She’d been so focused on bringing Faith to Frankie that she hadn’t thought about how seeing Faith would bring up memories of her own grandchildren. She doesn’t miss Mallory’s children with the active longing Frankie feels for Faith, but the dull, unresolved feeling of their absence is sharper now, a question that forces itself into her space.

Bud didn’t put the stroller in the car, perhaps to discourage adventure, so Grace slings both the diaper bag and her purse over her shoulder and carries Faith into the apartment building, up the elevator, down the hall. She unlocks the front door, a hot spike of nervousness driving into her stomach, and pushes inside. Frankie’s still at the breakfast table, still having her coffee. She’s cleared her cereal bowl and is reading a book, but otherwise nothing’s changed. “Hey,” Grace says.

When Frankie looks up, it’s as if the bones in her face rearrange: shock, joy, the related pain. She’s reminded briefly of the moment Frankie accused Grace of erasing her, remembers how hurt had distorted her features. 

“Grace,” Frankie whispers. She stands up and walks toward them. “How—”

“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” She hands Faith to Frankie, glances down at her watch. “You have an hour and twenty-five minutes with her. That’s all I could get.” 

Frankie carries Faith to the couch in the living room, cradles her in her lap, and Grace sets the diaper bag next to them. It’s already time to take a photo. She fishes her phone out of the purse and aims it at Faith. Frankie looks up, beaming for the camera, so Grace takes two pictures: one for them, of the happiness of Frankie and Faith together, one zoomed in so she can avoid sending Frankie’s happiness to Bud. 

Grace hovers at the edges: she warms Faith’s bottle, spreads a blanket so Faith and Frankie can hang out on the floor, sets a timer on her phone to go off five minutes before they need to be back in the car. Faith giggles at peek-a-boo, drinks greedily when Frankie feeds her, cries when she’s burped. When it’s time for another photo, Grace tries to be discreet, but Frankie notices. “You just took a picture. Are we really that cute?” She crinkles her nose.

“It’s for Bud,” Grace admits. 

Frankie’s face loses its warmth. “Oh.”

“We have an agreement.” An agreement she’s going to have to explain in detail later; she realizes that now.

Faith shakes a ring of plastic keys while Frankie changes her diaper. She cries some more. She shows off her ability to handle tummy time with a world-weary resignation. A baby makes a world feel small, and Grace remembers being off work after the birth of each of her children, guiltily wishing time would pass more quickly on mornings like these. Now she wishes this one would stretch out forever.

When the alarm on Grace’s phone sounds, Frankie and Faith are back on the couch, Frankie murmuring a story for Faith’s ears alone. Grace straightens up, packs everything back into the diaper bag, and finally there’s nothing to do but take Faith back. “Okay,” Grace says gently. “It’s time.” But Frankie shakes her head no, tightens the grip of her arms around Faith’s body. Grace’s heart beats faster, and the temperature in the room seems to rise. “Frankie,” she says, trying again. “We have to do this right.” 

“What does that mean?”

“It means we have to hold up our end. Send the stupid check-in photos and use Bud’s car and get her back on time.”

Frankie nods, but she doesn’t loosen her grip.

“I’ll bring her back, okay? I promise.” Grace bends toward the couch, finds Frankie’s hands with her own and tests the tightness of their grip. Faith is so small, bundled and happy in Frankie’s lap. “I promise,” Grace says again, and she feels Frankie start to let go. 

When their eyes meet, Frankie’s expression is as serious as she’s ever seen it, frozen with a longing that doesn’t belong only to this moment of involuntary separation. Grace has seen it every day since they left Walden Villas and fled to the beach, has seen it directed at her and only her, has ridden it out each time, always waiting for a joke to replace it. There’s nothing Frankie finds funny now. Grace bends more, kisses her on the mouth.

The kiss, quick but firm, is the opposite of flirtation. She scoops Faith up from Frankie’s lap the moment it’s over, no time to process anything. “I’ll be right back,” she says, slinging Faith over her hip. “And I’ll bring her back. I’ll ask for next weekend.”

The envelope stays sealed; it’s in Bud’s hand when he opens the door. When Grace hands Faith back, ignoring the tug in her heart that tells her to squeeze her and kiss the top of her head, Bud passes her off to Allison, who greets Grace with a tight smile. Bud stretches out his arm and Grace takes the envelope, tucking it carefully in her purse.

“Could we have her next Saturday? Please?”

Bud sighs. “How about two weeks from now?”

“For four hours. Two isn’t enough. With the driving, they didn’t even get an hour and a half together.”

When Bud agrees—same terms, double the time, two weeks from today—Grace again finds herself unable to thank him. She walks back to her own car as soon as they settle, shaky with everything she has to explain to Frankie. Now that the envelope is back in her possession, she’s incredulous at the risks she’s taken: in choosing their address as collateral, in kissing Frankie. She dreads having to tell Frankie she has to wait fourteen days to see her granddaughter again. When she’s home she’ll have a drink by herself in the kitchen, she decides, then make another one and bring it out, fuck moderation, fuck this careful day.

-

“Don’t go get a drink,” Frankie says when Grace returns. “Come sit with me.” She’s still on the couch, legs tucked onto the cushion, her arms around her knees.

Grace immediately detours to Frankie. Now the stubborn desire to avoid drinking as long as possible is layered atop the still-present desire to drink everything. She sets her purse down on the floor and sits, her back squarely aligned with the couch cushion. When she looks at Frankie, the motion of her head and neck contains the history of the thousands of times she’s sat properly but turned her head to look at her, out of curiosity, out of longing.

“Do it again,” Frankie says quietly. She finds Grace’s eyes.

For a second, Grace’s mind is blank. Then she realizes: the kiss. The weightless fear she felt when she thought she might have to wrestle Faith out of Frankie’s arms comes back. A question bursts out of her. “Do you really want this?” Another: “Not just—for fun?”

Frankie nods, pulls Grace’s hand loose from where it sits twisted in her own lap. She laces their fingers together, squeezes until their palms press close, and Grace’s body follows, shifts until she’s near enough. “Do it again,” Frankie repeats. “Please.” 

The kiss, which starts with the pressure of their closed lips, deepens and opens over time, grows to include the soft warmth of Frankie’s tongue against Grace’s. When they’re used to that, Grace runs her teeth against Frankie’s bottom lip, and Frankie hums into the sensation. 

When the kiss ends, Grace realizes her palm is sweaty as if it were seventh grade, not her seventh decade. She pulls her hand away and wipes it on the couch cushion; as soon as she’s done, Frankie takes it back. “Again and again,” Frankie says. 

The living room is half work: the Vybrant headquarters, an almost-neatly-ordered explosion of vibrators and packaging material and printer, barely fit in one quadrant of the room. And Frankie’s painting area—plastic on the floor, her easel set up near the window, what was once a studio’s worth of supplies condensed to a single shelf—takes up another quarter. Still, although she works right here, now that they’ve kissed Grace imagines herself coming home from work at the end of a long, hard day, being enclosed in a kiss before she’s all the way past the front door. For so long, she’d almost had herself convinced she didn’t need to be loved in this way. Now she has a glimmer of it, of the physical translation of the feeling that’s existed between them for years now, and with even this much she knows she’s become a person who needs more of it, needs affection and continuity and warmth. It’s surreal, to have waited for so long—to have suddenly arrived in the post-waiting part of her life.

“Yes,” Grace says, breaking into a smile. Yes, again and again. She tilts her head, and Frankie’s lips meet hers the moment Grace starts to close her eyes.

Later, when the other conversation they need to have presses too heavily for them to continue with this one, Grace explains the terms of the agreement with Bud, and the two-week delay before she can bring Faith back. She pulls her purse into her lap, shakes in Frankie’s arms as she hands over the envelope. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I could have given everything away.”

“Grace, no.” Frankie squeezes her. “It’s okay. You handled it.” She hands the envelope back to Grace without opening it. “You just wanted me to be able to see her, and it’s—it’s one of the kindest things anyone’s ever done for me. Thank you so much.”

Grace nods, and Frankie continues. “We’ll do it this way in two weeks, too. Okay? He won’t need to open the envelope. We’ll do it this way until we’re ready for something to be different.” 

“Okay,” Grace says. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. God, you went through so much to make this happen.”

Normally Grace would want to make it look effortless, like she can do anything. She has no energy for effortless today. “Yeah,” she admits, her hands and arms and chest still trembling with the weight of the confession, the contrast between holding it inside her and sharing it. “But I wanted to.” _I love you_ , she thinks. It’s almost the same thing.

\- 

Attraction, reaction, posture, position. All—until today, or close enough—performance. During sex, Grace has never felt that she was the only person performing. She’s never felt alone in that effort, though it’s been lonely almost every time. It will feel so different, choosing something else. But when Grace puts on her t-shirt and pajama pants and ices her knee on the couch and waits for Frankie to tell her to come to bed, she can almost fool herself. She can almost believe the only difference between tonight and any other night in this post-performance apartment is that she hasn’t taken melatonin yet, and she’s spent most of the day kissing. They kissed on the couch for what felt like hours, kissed and burned their dinner, ordered delivery instead and kissed while they waited for it to arrive, shared one and then two after-dinner drinks on the balcony, fingers brushing as they passed the glass back and forth, and kissed between sips. 

When she’s done with the ice, it occurs to her that if the apartment was really post-performance, she would walk into the bedroom herself instead of waiting for the invitation she trusts will come. Other than the steady sense of proximity afforded her by this apartment, there’s no sign of Frankie when Grace hoists herself off the couch. 

In bed, frozen with possibility, they stare at each other, and Grace breaks the stare with a brief burst of laughter—part nerves, part incredulity. 

“I know, right?” says Frankie, eyes wide. She reaches for Grace under the covers, finds her waist and wraps her arm around it. “This’ll change everything,” she continues, and Grace’s stomach drops. “And I’m scared out of my wits, but pretty stoked, too.”

Grace smiles, and before she can decide how to arrange herself, how to prepare, Frankie slices through it. “Grace?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you need most? From...this, I guess. It’s an open-ended question.” A half-smile plays at her face. “Do you know how cool it is to ask that question and not feel scared of the answer?”

Grace has an answer right away, but it takes a few long seconds for her to speak it aloud. There’s nothing but herself to provide momentum for the words; she isn’t drunk, or high, or heightened by anything but the honest curiosity in Frankie’s expression, and the desire that’s threaded through her entire life and has chosen today to insist upon itself. Frankie won’t tickle or kiss a response out of her. She’s asked, and she wants an answer, but she won’t force it. “Let me want you,” Grace finally says. A plainspoken request. She swallows. “And want me?” Her voice shrinks, but it’s mostly dark in the room, dark enough to survive saying this. “Let me have both of those things at the same time.”

Frankie tightens the embrace. “I do want you,” she says eagerly. “And I can make sure you know it. I’ll need to think out loud a lot more often.” 

As intense as the moment is, Grace chuckles. “How is that even possible?”

“Oh, it’s possible.” 

“What—what about you? What do you need?” Whether or not she should be embarrassed to ask the question, she is. It’s an act of nakedness.

“To be taken seriously. I can’t help how hilarious I am,” Frankie says, with just enough of a wry note in her voice to prevent this moment from becoming unserious. “I mean, don’t stop laughing at me when funny shit happens. But this is for real. So take me seriously.”

Grace thinks of Frankie’s damaged paintings. “Okay,” she whispers. 

“Thanks,” says Frankie. “It’ll make it easier for me to trust this.”

“Trust?” Grace feels a chill. She’s here, isn’t she? She’s chosen Frankie so many times, and Frankie’s the one who used to turn the idea of them into a joke. “What’s not to trust?”

“Oh, no, no, Grace, I trust you.” Frankie exhales, and Grace scoots a little closer. “But I stopped trying to anticipate anything after my brother died. And you know what happens when you go with the flow? You get cheated on for twenty years, and then you have a pleasant romance with a yam farmer who ends up preferring a local gal named Winnie, and you get locked in a home by your own flesh and blood—so to speak—because you let your life fall apart around you.”

Grace reaches up, brushes Frankie’s cheek with her fingertips. “That’s not why the kids did what they did. Well, it’s not only why. And you have every right to be mad about all of that stuff, but you can trust me.”

“I know,” Frankie says. “Really.”

“This isn’t random.”

“Definitely not random.” Frankie kisses her—not exactly a subject change, but a welcome shift. “I have so many ideas, Grace, potentially brilliant ones, and I’m not sure I can hold back anymore.” She pulls Grace even closer, and their breasts and thighs collide. “Uh, for example, I’ve always thought it’d be fun to touch you till you’re going a little insane, but not all the way to insane. I’d leave you right on the edge for as long as you can take it, and finally I’d give you everything you want.” Frankie turns away, plants her face in her pillow. “You just, um, seem like the kind of person who would enjoy that.”

“I, ah, I don’t know—” But Grace does know, and Frankie does too. That’s the kind of person she is. That’s what she wants. “Wait, ‘always’? What do you mean ‘always’?”

Frankie lifts her head. There’s just enough streetlight from the window to see evasion on her face. “Time is a loop. A cosmic circle.”

“It’s also a useful tool for linear measurements.”

“Right. If we’re speaking linearly...years? Thousands of days?”

Grace gasps. She’s an idiot. Frankie’s an idiot.

“I’m right, aren’t I,” Frankie says, confident now. Serious. “The denial? And the getting what you want?”

No words. Grace kisses her, first on the lips, then the side of her neck, then she pulls away just slightly and nods against the side of her face. She pulls back more, and slides her hand away from Frankie’s cheek, intending to mirror the way Frankie has her arm around her. Out of habit, Frankie lets go so she can grab Grace’s hand, and chuckles when she realizes she’s interrupted the intended trajectory. It’s only a little awkward for Frankie to let go, bringing her arm back to Grace’s waist, shifting so Grace can return the touch.

-

Morning has barely started to brighten the window when Frankie goes inside her with two fingers and the pace of someone with all the time in the world. It feels like standing waist-deep in the ocean, letting herself stumble, the steady pull and push of the waves keeping her upright. Grace has never had sex that was about anything other than sex, but tonight Frankie gives her the story of leaving home, and finding it again. The safety of being broken by a creator.

Grace’s head keeps bumping the headboard; they’ve had to scoot back down over and over. The comforter is long gone, and the sheets are a tangle at the foot of the bed. There’s a sheen of sweat on their skin, and Grace can’t decide if it’s too cold or too hot in the room. “I’m actually going to go insane,” she cries.

“No, you won’t,” Frankie says, firm but quiet. The louder Grace gets, the more Frankie whispers. 

But she flutters her fingers then, mirth and mercy in every stroke. “Frankie,” Grace says. “Frankie, please,” and maybe Frankie speeds up because of the helplessness in her voice. She yells when she comes, a singular insensible sound, her fingers finding Frankie’s hand at the last moment. It’s so much more than anything she’s ever had, not water but land, an interior, something human-made and hidden, only theirs, her body not made new but shown to itself.

When she can think again, Grace rolls onto her stomach, slides carefully down the bed. She doesn’t have an intricate narrative for Frankie. As always, she lacks the willpower to make Frankie wait longer than thirty seconds for anything. She’s only a nerve, and what does a nerve have to give? She has a kiss that can go anywhere, and she lands between Frankie’s legs. It’s a simple story, in the end, a home to refuse to lose.

\- 

“I hate Facebook,” Grace says. It’s late on a Friday night; she shouldn’t look at a screen this close to bedtime, but she needed a distraction from the RICE method, and her phone was right near the couch.

It’s far from her favorite aspect of running a business, but Grace is pretty good at doing social media for Vybrant. She hardly ever posts anything on her personal accounts; her preferred way to participate in social media is to sit next to Frankie and watch her while she Instagrams. Still, she torments herself with Facebook a few times per week, to keep an eye on people she still isn’t sure she wants to see.

“What’s up?” Frankie asks.

“Macklin was in a school play tonight.”

Frankie scoots closer, only jostling Grace’s knee a little bit, and peers at the screen. “Whoa. He’s playing a container of french fries?”

“Okay, that’s what I thought.”

“It’s trippy as fuck.”

The photo includes what might as well be everyone in the world except for them. Macklin-as-french-fries is in the middle, and Mallory and Mitch stand as far apart from each other as possible, and Maddie and the twins are there, and Brianna and Barry, and Coyote and Nadia, who must be pretty close to their moving day, and Robert and Sol. Bud and his family aren’t around, but the picture gives the impression that they were invited. Grace doesn’t want anyone who was invited to this photo to know where they live, doesn’t want to talk to them about anything of substance, or maybe anything at all, yet she’s still hurt. Macklin didn’t use her relationship with Frankie to manipulate her into a retirement home; none of this is his fault, and she misses him. A little. They’re the head lice version of blood brothers.

“We could go tomorrow night,” Frankie says. “Unless it was one night only?”

Grace scrolls through Mallory’s feed until she finds a link to a posting from the school about the production. There are performances tomorrow and Sunday. “It’s playing all weekend.”

The next night, they arrive just before curtain, and sit in the back row of the auditorium. Frankie spends most of the play tracing patterns on Grace’s palm, and Grace tries not to jump out of her skin, reminds herself that the audience is here for the play, not to look at her and Frankie. The play, _Healthy Choices: the Musical_ , is an allegory about whatever pop science replaced the food pyramid, and, as an unhealthy food, Macklin is eventually relegated to the sidelines as someone who should be invited over only occasionally. Grace knows this is commentary on french fries, not her grandson, but she’s filled with indignance anyway.

Afterward, they run into Mallory and Macklin in the lobby. Macklin has already changed out of his french fry costume, and Grace is strangely disappointed. “You’re here,” Mallory says, strained but not as surprised as she might be. Grace wonders if she spotted them in the audience during the show.

“Facebook,” says Grace, by way of explanation. She can’t believe she’s broken weeks of silence with the word _Facebook_.

“Mack,” says Frankie. She goes for a high five, and Macklin meets her halfway. “You were incredible! You restored gravitas to the potato.” 

“Thanks,” Macklin says, a shy grin on his face. It doesn’t matter that he has no idea what Frankie’s compliment means.

Grace can’t seem to find Macklin’s eyes. He’s still smiling faintly, his chin tucked into his neck in a gesture of pleased embarrassment that makes him look so much older than last time she saw him. “You were amazing,” she says to his general vicinity.

“Say ‘thank you,’” prompts Mallory, and Grace feels a flash of annoyance that she hasn’t given Macklin time to answer. Grace remembers her own horror that Brianna and Mallory might fail to demonstrate the good manners she’d taught them, but with distance Grace can see that conversationally, barely any time has passed. Macklin just demonstrated his manners with Frankie, and Grace wants to tell Mallory to lay off and give him a chance.

“Thanks, Grandma Grace,” Macklin says, the words muttered at half-volume. 

With barely anything sayable left to say, they don’t stay long. “Thanks for coming,” says Mallory, ushering Macklin away. Grace feels guilty relief: Mallory isn’t ready for a serious conversation either.

When they’re back in the car, Frankie lets out a sigh. “That was a terrible play,” she says uncharitably, and Grace suspects she’s said it to make her smile. “We obviously have to make an unhealthy choice now.”

“Lead the way,” says Grace, even though she’s driving.

Frankie has her park at home, but they don’t go inside. Instead, they walk to the dive not far from their complex. “Beer is drinkable junk food,” Frankie says. “It’s the perfect compromise.”

Although she offered to drink beer on Say Yes night, she hasn’t had any in years. She would have done anything to make Frankie happy that night; she’s still a little embarrassed when she remembers how enthusiastic she was with those Chip Clips, and how she was even more enthusiastic at the prospect of dressing her. 

The bar has seemed crowded whenever Grace has driven past at night, but it’s early enough for a weekend evening that they can place their orders quickly. “An IPA!” Frankie exclaims appreciatively when Grace selects a Hop Hunter. “Go big or go home.” 

“Yep,” Grace says, with the resignation of someone whose best and worst quality is the same thing.

Frankie orders something dark and chocolatey, and they settle with their beers at a small table next to a window. A neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign hangs above their heads; bathed in beerlight, Frankie looks like she’s won an award. 

“I think we should start looking at houses,” Grace says before she’s taken her first sip. 

Frankie startles, and just barely gets a foam situation under control. “What? Really? But we have so many months left on our lease.”

“Well, yeah, but the process can take months, and, and we don’t even know what we’ll find!” Grace has carried this topic with her for a few days, excited to find the right moment to bring it up. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world to pay the month’s penalty and break the lease.” She deflates a little, a feeling not unlike the one that came over her when Frankie wanted to settle for the apartment in the first place, even if the one-bedroom turned out to be a fantastic idea.

“I know.” Frankie shrugs. “I just—we just got there.” 

“We can talk about it later,” Grace says. She takes a long drink. The beer isn’t the cold soggy bread from her distant memories of frat parties and tailgating, but something strong and bitter and good. 

-

Grace is already in bed, and Frankie has just walked in with the cylindrical foam pillow she uses for her back. “Hey, honey? You walked a ton today. Think you could sleep with this under your knees?”

“I don’t know—I could probably start out that way.”

“Lift up,” Frankie says, and she wedges the pillow beneath Grace’s knees, re-situates the covers, removes her duster-style sweater, and slides into bed. 

“So.” Frankie grins, turning to Grace and propping her head on her arm. “In one of my fantasies, I take you when you’re on your hands and knees.”

“Huh,” says Grace. She’s momentarily incapable of coherence; a couple weeks ago, when they first started using Frankie’s back pillow as a knee pillow, it was for sex reasons. Having the pillow beneath her opens her up, forces her to spread her legs a little. It’s absurdly decadent, simultaneously treating her knees to less gravity than usual and getting fucked, the feeling not unlike being in an airplane just after takeoff, when everything tilts backward and there’s nowhere to go but up. They’re just sleeping tonight, and that’s all she has in her, but suddenly she’s coasting on a low buzz of arousal anyway.

Despite the lack of feedback, Frankie keeps talking. “I think I actually prefer the idea of taking you when you’re on your elbows and butt. More realistic. I mean, we’ve obviously already done that, but it’s not like it gets old.” 

When Grace asked Frankie to make her feel wanted, she’d assumed Frankie would tell her she was pretty, or show appreciative interest in her clothes, her face, her abilities. Frankie does all of that, but her speciality is a flatteringly explicit level of specificity. Grace hates it when women are bad at taking compliments. What’s so hard about owning it, about saying “thank you”? But when Frankie talks like this—thinks out loud, as promised—Grace blushes and stammers and can’t figure out to to respond half the time, at least not until they get warmed up.

“Oh!” Frankie nudges Grace in the ribs and chuckles, like they’re watching a movie and both getting a kick out of it. “Wanna hear another one? You’re an ice skater, alone in the rink doing figure eights. Then I show up and skate you over to the little wall that’s there so people can stop skating. And...you know. Your costume might get torn, but that’s okay.” She sighs. “The sequins look so pretty falling on the ice. Because of the moonlight.” 

Oh, _God_. “Why do all your sex fantasies end with me having more knee surgery?”

Frankie tilts her head. “Not all of them.” She pauses, and a smile slowly spreads across her face. “This one’s inspired by every time I get a text: what if we try the Ménage on your boobs?”

“Oh, no!” Grace laughs. “Your boobs. Um, your breasts.” She wills herself to stop talking.

“That’s so sweet.” 

“Well, you’re the one receiving text messages there.”

They’re quiet for awhile, settling in, and finally Frankie reaches to turn out the light. It’s been a long day. They’re in the process of searching for a distributor who can handle both retail placements and the direct orders from the website. As business grows, mailing out direct orders from the apartment is unsustainable, and although they’ve discussed hiring someone to help, inviting an employee into their home seems less than ideal. Handling two different distribution companies is less than ideal, too, although they won’t give up their relationship with their current one unless they find the perfect solution. Grace is phone-tired and internet-tired, and tired from the laps she took around the complex after too much time online, and Frankie is tired from preparing over ninety vibrator shipments by herself. 

Grace is almost asleep when she reverses course, wakes up with a start. They haven’t kissed goodnight, which is something tonight has in common with thousands of other nights. But if they don’t kiss tonight, it would break what’s becoming a long pattern, and she doesn’t want that to happen.

She could re-adjust the knee pillow and lean over and take what she wants, give Frankie a peck, snuggle closer. Or she could contribute something to a dynamic growing between them, a dynamic that ratchets up the tension and earns them pleasure as much as literal friction does. Frankie likes it when Grace needs her, likes the healthiness of her harmless potent cravings, likes it when she asks using words.

“Frankie?” Grace reaches out, finds Frankie’s hand. 

“Mm?”

“Kiss me goodnight?”

Frankie doesn’t gasp, exactly, but there’s a small intake of breath, and in the sound Grace can hear what caused it: her own voice, which came out more trembly and needy and soft than she’d expected. Grace shuts her eyes, dark and then darker, feels Frankie close the distance between them. The kiss lands, just a light goodnight kiss, and Grace hums against it.

“‘night,” Frankie whispers, resting her head on Grace’s shoulder. Because they’re still holding hands, their arms are trapped between them, and Frankie lets go of Grace’s hand so she can maneuver to a more comfortable position, softens the loss of contact by sliding her other hand into Grace’s pajama top. 

“Goodnight,” Grace says after a pause that was almost too long. It doesn’t matter. Grace has the imprecise sense of being settled in time, of having plenty, such a relief after all the wondering she’s done. 

-

The VinDiego Wine and Food Festival is a sea of white umbrellas and booths and tents, throngs of vendors and tasters competing for air; Grace knows this because she’s seen Frankie’s pictures. Frankie goes with Amanda and Jason every year, as did Frankie and Sol before that, and for four years, Grace has listened to Frankie brag about how she “won” VinDiego in the divorce. Sol can still attend separately, of course, but it was primarily Frankie’s thing anyway, and the tradition with Amanda and Jason has continued without him. 

This year, for the first time, Frankie expresses surprise that Grace has never gone. “Is it the pseudo-pun? Because you named your business Say Grace, Grace. That doesn’t hold up. Wait. Is it because there are only 300 varieties of wine?”

Grace rolls her eyes. “Who needs a festival when you can drink alone at home?”

Later, Frankie brings it up again. “Amanda’s buying VinDiego tickets tonight...I’m gonna need your help with Vine later.”

“Venmo.”

“Right. You sure you’re not coming?”

“We don’t have to do everything together.”

“Grace,” Frankie says, exasperated. “I already told Amanda to get an extra ticket. I want you to come with us. Please?”

“Until now, you didn’t invite me.” Grace knows she’s being pedantic, but she can’t help it. She wants an invitation.

Frankie points at her, a gesture of concession. “Fair,” she says. “Will you come?”

For the entire first hour of VinDiego, Amanda and Jason complain about men. Grace has spent her whole life in conversation with people whose trouble is liking men, wishing perversely that she had more complaints to contribute to the conversation. Her friends would talk about toilet seats and clumsy compliments and too much beer, and Grace would stay quiet, imagine herself ruining the conversation with something about the devastating silence, the mutual disappointment, the unspoken but deeply felt panic of a permanent mistake. Today, Amanda and Jason talk nonstop while they wait in line for each tasting, and she and Frankie exchange smug glances, as if they don’t even know what men are. A month and a half in a one-bedroom apartment with Frankie and the heterosexual male has faded to a vague memory, a concept an idiot made up and was right to leave in the past.

When the group manages to find a landing place, a small table around which they can stand, Frankie gets a turn to talk. Amanda and Jason seem to know everything about Grace and Frankie already, had apparently assumed the truth a few months before the truth was happening. Grace has focused a lot on the people she isn’t speaking with right now, worrying in advance about what it will be like to tell them. But now, as they listen to their friends’ congratulatory teasing, Frankie takes her hand, and Grace is surprised by the warm glow in her chest. She gets to enjoy this—not only in the intimate solace of their apartment, but as a person in the world. 

Grace’s thoughts drift around this world in which people know. Their family, in some vague future. Their friends. Sheree will be as surprised as Amanda and Jason, which is to say not at all. And even the friends with no idea, who might not approve—she’s endured worse silences. And the wider world can have this knowledge, too. Grace’s dentist died recently, and when Frankie refers Grace to her dentist, she’ll introduce her as her partner. When they get there, their future realtor will know.

Frankie squeezes her hand. “Yeah, everything’s pretty great,” she says, and Grace can hear in Frankie’s tone that she wants to be more specific. Grace is invited, but Frankie is tipsy and in a sharing mood, and she deserves space to dish.

“Hey, who’s hungry?” Grace says, excusing herself. “I’ll bring back some food for everyone.”

When she disentangles her fingers from Frankie’s and starts to walk away, she immediately overhears Frankie say, in an ineffective stage whisper, “Everything got so much better the second we started fucking.” 

Grace doesn’t mind the vulgarity or the overshare. There are two items on her five-year plan: sell 400,000 vibrators, and make absolutely certain that Frankie Bergstein never has cause to use the word “diddle” to describe sex with her. At the time, when Frankie was first home from Santa Fe, Grace couldn’t quite identify the hopefulness she felt when Frankie used that term to describe bedtime sex with Jacob; now she understands that what she noticed was that the word is both childish and doddering, something at once younger and older than they actually are. Frankie gives her other reasons to feel confident, in addition to all the love and attention and focus: she occasionally marvels that Grace stays awake for post-sex cuddling, and revels in the fact that Grace never counters Frankie’s offer of another round with the suggestion that they play a folk music trivia game instead. But being better than men isn’t enough. She wants to make Frankie even happier than Frankie knows how to want to be.

Much later, when Nick shows up, they’re halfway to wine-drunk and Jason and Amanda have wandered off and Grace is feeding Frankie a cauliflower wing because Frankie’s holding a pupusa in one hand and a tiny cup of saag paneer in the other. “If it isn’t Grace and Kooky,” Nick says, but the words themselves contain more amusement than the tone. 

Grace had forgotten his voice, the way he sounds like he’s marketing a concept every time he speaks. There’s a woman with him, slight and auburn-haired and a good twenty years younger than Nick. Grace could easily be her mother. 

“This is Bonnie,” Nick says.

Bonnie steps forward and smiles, her hand outstretched, but Grace can’t take it because her hand is covered in wing sauce. “Sorry,” she says, holding up her fingers. Sauce drips onto the grass. Bonnie takes her hand back. Nick offers her a napkin, which she accepts. “I’m Grace.” 

“I know.” 

“Kooky,” says Nick. “Frankie. Mind if I borrow Grace for one moment?”

Frankie shrugs, eyebrows raised. “Ask her yourself.”

Grace nods. “Just quickly,” she says, smiling apologetically at Bonnie, then at Frankie. She wishes she’d either been doing something more unequivocally gay the second Nick walked up, like giving Frankie a kiss, or doing something completely un-suspect so they wouldn’t have to talk about it at all. 

“So,” Nick says when they’re a safe distance away. Grace hopes for a _how have you been?_ or a _good to see you_ , but she’s out of luck. “You and Frankie.”

Unequivocal after all. Grace sighs. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t realize she was your type.” He squints. “...but maybe I should have?”

Grace glances back at Bonnie, who’s nodding at Frankie with a miserable smile on her face. “Well, I’m obviously not your type.”

“Hey, I was devastated when you broke up with me.” Now heartbreak is the thing he wants to sell, but Grace can tell he means every word. “I’ve been seeing Bonnie for a couple months. She’s way smarter than me, which you can take credit for. I mean, she’s an actual neuroscientist.”

“I’m no neuroscientist.” 

“No, but you’re way smarter than me.” 

Grace smiles, looks down at her feet, at her cane. 

“I tried to buy your house,” Nick says. “I wasn’t quick enough.”

“The kids moved fast. And it’s okay. We found a new place.”

“I’m sorry. I would have liked for you to have your house back.”

“It might be better this way,” Grace says. She’d like to think obligation to Nick wouldn’t have entered into her post-Walden Villas decision-making process, but she feels like she escaped something difficult. 

“Yeah,” Nick says. “Maybe so.” It’s his turn to look back at Bonnie and Frankie. “You know, I honestly feel better. You and Frankie. Nothing I could’ve done about that.”

“No,” Grace agrees.

He grins. “Maybe we could go out sometime, all four of us. There’s a couples’ cruise that leaves from the Bay every June. I’ll send you the itinerary.”

“Dinner. Maybe. I’ll check with Frankie, but—I think I’d like that.”

Today Nick is easily talked down from grandiosity. “Dinner. Frankie and I can gang up on Bonnie, torment her for never having gotten the chance to sleep with you.”

Grace blushes. The compliment is a total delight. “We should go back,” she says. It’s been all of three minutes, but she can’t wait.

-

Frankie sets two coffee mugs on the breakfast table and sits down next to Grace. “Okay,” she says as if the conversation had already begun. “I know there’s a startling clarity to my sexual visions. You can stop me anytime.”

“Go on,” Grace says dryly. It’s 7:45 in the morning.

“So get this: I’m a hermit, just a very wise, semi-lonely hermit living in a hut made of entirely natural materials. You’re a pilgrim on a spiritual quest. Oh, and there’s a hot spring near my hermit’s hut, and in addition to my spiritual practice I’m a soapmaker, so I’ve actually got much better personal hygiene than you might think, which was a detail I thought you’d appreciate. For the first few days I see you as a really ordinary dime-a-dozen kind of pilgrim. You spend all your time trying out my soap and praying and listening to my parables and stuff. But while my wisdom is impressive, there’s a major plot twist, and you end up schooling me in the ways of love.”

“Oh, I’ll make you reach enlightenment,” Grace says, narrowing her eyes. Then her face neutralizes. “I’m just kidding. We’re not roleplaying pilgrim and hermit.” This point shouldn’t need clarifying, but it never hurts to be sure.

“Grace Hanson, you’re almost fun.” Immediately, before the words can sting, Frankie lets go of her coffee mug and grabs Grace’s hand. “I’m joking,” she says. “I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had.”

Everything but Grace’s mouth says “me too.” Her mouth doesn’t speak, but it smiles, and she hopes Frankie knows. She really hopes Frankie knows.

-

Grace stands on Bud and Allison’s front porch, holding Faith while Bud brings the stroller and diaper bag in from the car. She props her cane against the railing so she can sway back and forth and brush at Faith’s cheek with her thumb, trying to keep her from getting fussy. She murmurs under her breath. “We fought for that stupid stroller, didn’t we? And then we went to the park with Grandma Frankie? And you met a golden retriever, and you drank all the milk we brought, and you didn’t nap?” She would feel ridiculous, telling Faith the tale of the day they’ve just had, but she’s already a person who took a newborn baby to the library and synopsized _Great Expectations_ and _Things Fall Apart_ and _To the Lighthouse_ , followed by a tour of her favorite contemporaries. “Your grandma turned me into a weirdo,” she whispers. 

When Bud’s put everything in the house, he comes back to the porch. “She’s a good eater, huh?” he says as he takes Faith from Grace’s arms. 

For a moment, Bud’s sentence seems like a non-sequitur, but then Grace remembers that she was in some of the pictures they sent today. In the series of texted photos, Bud watched her feed Faith, though the pictures didn’t show him everything. It’s an unseasonably cool day, and the breeze rushing through the park reminded her of what it felt like to live in a place with sharp-edged seasons, where the mildness of spring wasn’t a calm continuation but a shock to the system, a transitory promise. After a harsh Connecticut winter, the gentleness of the new season was the surprise. 

When they’d wandered through the park for awhile, they sat down on a bench near the play structures, and Frankie wrapped her arm around Grace’s shoulders while Grace gave Faith her bottle. Each time the photo reminder alarm went off, she’d stopped holding onto them only long enough to take a picture and text it to Bud. When Faith was fed and burped, Grace laid her down in the stroller, and Frankie pushed it back and forth from where they sat, hoping the motion would coax her to sleep. They had no such luck, but Faith seemed content enough to babble to herself. Frankie’s free hand found Grace’s, and they didn’t speak, so Faith would have a quieter place to rest. 

“Yeah, she’s really good,” Grace says. “You were a good eater, too. Brianna, not so much, at least not at first.” Until today, Grace had forgotten about Frankie’s baby formula guilt—guilt over something she literally could not help. Back in 1980, Grace had made it worse by pointing that out. But in the end, it was Grace who assuaged Frankie’s guilt, too, not by appealing to logic but by admitting that at three months old, she had to supplement Brianna’s diet with formula because they were still struggling with breastfeeding. Bud ate like a champ, hit every growth milestone, and it was a point of pride for Frankie. 

In that old life, married and mothering young children, Grace used to ask herself “Am I a wife? Am I a mother?” She obsessed over those words, couldn’t find herself in those words even as she was being those words. Today, the feeling she had in the park wasn’t exactly maternal, but it didn’t have to be. She has the ability to care for other people, the capacity to want to care for other people, the opportunity to put it into action. Because she’s with Frankie, and because their families are connected, she’s something like a grandmother to Faith. It isn’t surreal the way “wife” always was, or scary the way “mother” started out.

Bud smiles. “Oh, almost forgot,” he says, and reaches back into the house, picks up the envelope with the address from the table near the door and hands it over. “Here,” he says, and Grace tucks it into her purse. This isn’t a new routine—two hours, then four hours, now four hours and a stroller—and she can’t tell if Bud’s casualness is real or feigned. She’d never have left without the envelope, not in a million years. “Grace, this is absurd.” He softens his voice. “Don’t you think—don’t you think you should come inside so we can talk about all this?”

Instinctively, Grace backs up. “Not without your mom,” she says, fear spiking in her heart. She feels behind her for her cane, and rummages in her purse for her car keys. “Separate rooms...that’s what went wrong in the first place.” Her face tingles, though she’ll beat back the automatic terror she feels, and will not cry. “We weren’t in the same room, and you poured me a drink and said the only thing you knew would work.” She shakes her head, as if to fight the memory. “I have to go. Two weeks from now? Four hours, and the stroller, and the pack-and-play.”

Bud sighs. “You’ll talk to Mom?”

“We talk all the time,” she says. “Two weeks?”

“Yes,” says Bud. “Two weeks.”

“I have to go.” 

In the car, Grace has to remind herself to drive the speed limit, that there’s no real difference between getting back home in ten minutes or thirteen minutes. The car isn’t a separate room, she thinks, trying to calm down. It’s just a vehicle, just a means of forward motion. 

-

Unless you want a nickname like Kooky, you don’t get to scream your happiness or your sadness or your rage whenever you feel it. Even Frankie—Frankie, who Grace used to think was so maddeningly untethered and free—abides by that principle most of the time.

But Grace is tired. For so many years, she worked so hard to be coolness and light, to be dependable but detached, to take up as much and as little space as possible. It’s different now, here with Frankie in their bedroom, small and warm and dark. Her inner thighs are slick with lube and come, and so is her face, and everything’s a mess, and almost everything feels good, and she can’t be quiet. Frankie has eased out of her, has tried to ease her down, strokes soothingly at Grace’s thigh with wet fingers, murmurs with contentment when Grace joins their hands. 

Although Grace’s body is done coming, she’s not done screaming. This makes Grace want to laugh, because it’s surely the most dramatic thought she’s ever had about herself. But the levity is no match for the reality of the moment, and some of the leftover noise leaks out, just a whimper despite the din still inside her.

“Baby,” Frankie says. “You okay?” She asks every time.

Grace rolls closer and rests her head on Frankie’s chest. “Let me do you again?” 

Frankie gulps. “Oh my God,” she says with a note of surprised delight, as if Grace is the generous one. “Okay.” Frankie shifts, parting her legs, and Grace adjusts, cranes her neck and moans against Frankie’s ribs when her fingers make contact. Frankie’s hand, loving and solid, lands on her back. She brushes against Frankie’s entrance, her touch light and almost meandering. She wants it to last a long time. Maybe it will be gentle, and maybe the sounds coming from her throat will tire out, replaced eventually with peace. But the noise is from a bottomless supply, a hunger turned into sound.

-

After owning a washer and dryer for decades, adjusting to the communal laundry facility is one of the worst parts of the apartment complex. Grace and Frankie have a little laundry cart, which makes it easier to haul their clothes and detergent to the first floor, but the machines are taken half the time. 

Grace does her laundry, and Frankie does Frankie’s. She was nervous when she told Frankie she’d wasted too much of her life on Robert Hanson’s laundry, and that no matter how much she loved her, Frankie was on her own with her laundry from now on. This turned out to be a terrible way to accidentally say “I love you” for the first time since starting to sleep with someone, but after Frankie made her say it properly about eight times, they bounced back. And Frankie took the laundry part of the statement in stride, almost as if her capacity for love wasn’t conditional upon Grace’s willingness to do her chores. Now Grace’s biggest challenge is biting her tongue when Frankie lets dirty clothes pile up. 

She only has to do one load today. As she makes her way down the hall, she hears voices coming from the laundry room, but this doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be thwarted. There are three washers and three dryers, and working from home means she can check on availability frequently. When she’s close to the end of the hall, she sees a flash of red hair through the half-open door; the hair unmistakably belongs to their next door neighbor, Sarah. Sarah lives alone, so she must be doing laundry with a friend. 

Someone who isn’t Sarah speaks. Grace doesn’t recognize this voice, but it makes her stop walking, instinctively knowing she shouldn’t be discovered.“Wait, you’re talking about the old lesbians, right? Not the football guys?” 

“Right, Frankie and Grace,” Sarah says. “I love them, but they are honestly worse than the football bros. I mean, we got off to a great start: I brought them cookies and Frankie lured me inside and smoked me out. Which was cool.” Sarah was the first neighbor who’d bothered to say hello, and Frankie had been exceedingly welcoming, though they haven’t hung out much since. Grace has no right to this conversation, but she’s offended anyway. There’s a certain descriptive quality to “old lesbian” that she can’t entirely argue with, but they aren’t bad neighbors. They wave, they smile, they keep to themselves. They smoked her out.

“Does Grace smoke?”

Grace holds her breath.

“Um, she had like one hit and half a cookie? But she’s crazy, too!” Sarah giggles. “I mean, it’s like living next to twenty-two-year-olds? They have pizza delivered at weird hours, and they have really, really loud sex, which, congratulations, except I think my bed is about six inches from theirs, and a couple days ago I couldn’t use my balcony even though it was super nice out because they were on their balcony having a really intense fight about vibrator price points.” 

“I don’t even know what that means,” says Sarah’s friend.

“It means yelling about corporate responsibility, then sticking your tongue down somebody’s throat.”

Grace’s neighborly indignation is long gone, evaporated, replaced by sheer mortification. She and Frankie were supposed to be alone together—that was the whole point of this place. Hours and hours of begging and moaning and shrieking and crying, and, yes, a few minutes of fighting here and there. She wills the laundry cart not to squeak as she turns it around and walks back to the elevator as fast as she possibly can. Can she crawl in a hole and die? Can she give herself a high five? Can she do both? 

In the elevator, Grace can’t help but silently argue against Sarah’s memory of the fight about Vybrant. To call it a matter of corporate responsibility is an over-simplification. Frankie wants their vibrators to cost less so more people can buy them. Grace wants to keep selling them at a price appropriate for the market, and to continue doing what she’s done from the beginning, which is to tithe ten percent of their proceeds. She doesn’t tithe to a church, but to a women’s shelter right here in San Diego, one Grace and Frankie chose together in the early days of the business. They can do more good selling the vibrators at an appropriate price. If Frankie wants, they can throw in some free vibrators with every donation, but she refuses to bring up that possibility while Frankie keeps deliberately missing the point about why their products cost what they do. She predicts they’re going to yell and make out about vibrator price points at least a few more times, ideally indoors from now on, ideally a galaxy away from this thin-walled apartment complex.

The elevator chimes, and Grace is returned to the second floor. “Frankie,” she hisses when she’s back inside the apartment. Frankie’s busy painting, but this conversation can’t wait. “I know we’re not supposed to talk about this yet, but we have to move away.”

Frankie’s eyes go wide. “Did the kids find us? Are they here?”

“No, Sarah was in the laundry room talking about us. She can hear everything we do.”

“Oh, wow.” Frankie chuckles. “Well, that’s not so surprising, is it? I mean, our apartments are mirror images of each other. Bedroom wall to bedroom wall, kitchen to kitchen. On the bright side, our living rooms couldn’t be further apart, so she has no idea what we watch on TV.” She pauses, cocks her head toward the apartment on the other side of theirs. “Of course, 207 hears everything we watch, but it goes both ways.”

Grace swallows. She forgets sometimes that Frankie’s good at spatial reasoning. She’s expressed surprise at this skill before, and Frankie responded with a withering stare and a gesture toward her latest painting, as if to remind Grace that she’s a visual person. But visual person or not, Frankie isn’t panicking. “You’re not getting it,” Grace says. “I’m talking about, um, sex.” She leans the laundry cart against the wall, crosses her arms against her chest. It’s her own fault. She’s the loud one, the one who can’t control herself. She prays Frankie doesn’t make her spell it out any more than she already has.

Frankie scrapes her paintbrush against her palette, sets it down in a jar of turpentine. “Honey, I know.”

“But—”

“Hey,” Frankie says. “Let me take you on a tour of this apartment. Home sweet home. It’ll take five seconds.” She crosses the room, unfolds Grace’s arms so she can take her hand. “This is the living room, which is also the Vybrant headquarters, art studio, and breakfast nook.” She marches them past the kitchen, points in its direction. “That’s the kitchen.” She pulls them down the short hallway, which runs alongside the kitchen and dead-ends at the bedroom. “Horribly designed closet’s the first door on the left, bathroom’s the second.” The bedroom door is already open, but when they get there, she flings it wider. “And here’s the greatest goddamn room out of any house I’ve lived in my entire life.” She sits down on the edge of the bed, pulls Grace’s hand onto her lap and squeezes it between both of hers. “You wanna know why?”

Grace grins. “Why?” she asks, although she’s starting to know.

“Because this is the room where I get to feel you completely lose it, and every sound you make is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You don’t shut up for anybody. Certainly not for a carrot-top pothead who’d better hope she’s having sex this good in fifty years.” 

“Okay,” Grace says again. She doesn’t know how she’ll manage not to think about it, but she can try.

Worry creeps into Frankie’s expression. “Grace,” she says softly. “I don’t want to leave this room, and this room is pretty much permanently located here. When you agreed to a one-bedroom it was like a miracle.”

Oh. “Honey. It isn’t a miracle. There isn’t, um, a lesbian force field around this apartment.” She gestures between them, back and forth. “This would be happening anywhere.” The apartment was a catalyst, but it can’t be a talisman. 

“Yeah, but you like your space, and—” Frankie grimaces. “Sometimes I was lonely at the beach, out in my studio. As much as I miss it, I feel better here.”

“Well,” Grace says. “I’d like to be able to close a door at the end of the day and not see Vybrant again until the next morning, and I’d like to eat a meal in a room that doesn’t smell like turpentine.” She skips to the end. “But I don’t want my own bedroom. Okay? You believe that?”

Frankie nods. “I do.”

“And it’s not like we could leave tomorrow, no matter how mortified I am about the sex thing. I was serious when I said it’ll probably take months.”

They’re quiet for a moment, then Frankie speaks. “What are we gonna do?” 

Frankie isn’t asking about approaches to home-buying. “Be more specific.”

“About the kids. Moving here—hiding out—hasn’t made me less mad about what happened. What if I stay this mad at them forever?”

“Maybe we both will.”

“I don’t like being this angry, but I don’t have a choice...and eventually we have to tell our own family members where we live.”

Grace wonders if they really have to, though she knows Frankie’s right. She sighs. “When I dropped off Faith yesterday, Bud invited me inside to talk, and I freaked out. I said I couldn’t have that conversation without you.”

Frankie squeezes her hand. “Maybe I could come with you to drop her off next time. I’ll think about it, at least. That’s progress, right?”

“Yeah,” Grace says. “That sounds okay.”

-

That night, Grace reads aloud from _Commonwealth_ for the first time in a few days. She sits up in bed, her left knee propped on its pillow, the leg of her pajamas rolled up so Frankie can lie next to her and play with the exposed skin. Grace tries to read loudly enough that Frankie can hear her easily, but not so loudly that she’s reading a bedtime story to Frankie and Sarah. She holds back a shudder at the thought.

Before long, Frankie sits up and distracts her: from the thinness of the walls, from the novel unfolding so slowly, from anything but this acutely-felt place, bounded by space if not by sound from the rest of the world. She kisses and kisses her, and Grace sighs between kisses, cries out when Frankie puts her hand between her still-clothed legs to test and tease. She bites her lip in response to the sound, but the pressure only intensifies the feeling. “I love you,” she says, and that takes some of the edge off, keeps the scream inside her a few inches away.

Frankie peels off Grace’s pajama pants and underwear. “I love you too.” She climbs carefully over Grace’s left leg, trying to leave the knee stable as possible, and kneels between her legs. She reaches out, runs a finger along the lace-edged neckline of Grace’s silk camisole. “This is pretty,” she says, and Grace warms. She wore it because she wanted Frankie to notice it. She wore it because it feels good against her skin. There are always two reasons, now. Grace grabs Frankie’s hand and holds it against her. She freezes the moment, then releases it. Releases Frankie’s hand, too.

It’s different when the lights are on and they can see each other’s faces fully. Frankie grabs lube from the nightstand and works her up, her fingers shaping Grace’s anger and sadness and joy into something loud and hot, something with a life of its own. She shifts again, lies down and brings Grace with her, pushing the pillow to the side when it gets in the way. She wraps an arm around her middle, pulls her closer. “Touch yourself,” she whispers into Grace’s ear. “Get yourself ready for me.” Grace closes her eyes, does it without thinking about it, smiles at the moan Frankie carves into her shoulder as she watches.

It’s too much, too quick—the room was already so full, and now there’s the warmth of Frankie’s body against hers, and the press of her own hand. She moves against herself, listens to Frankie breathing fast, lets the feeling build, minute by minute. “Oh,” she says, “I’m—” 

“Say it,” Frankie says, but Grace’s answering shout is beyond their vocabularies. 

“I was supposed to be getting ready,” Grace says when she’s caught her breath. 

Frankie giggles. “Yeah, you went for it,” she says, sliding her hand down to find Grace’s fingers. “All the better.”

“Mmm.” Grace turns to look at her. She opens her mouth. A sound comes out, helpless but insistent. She can’t be quiet now. Too much has changed.

In the morning, the light in the room is odd; as Grace adjusts, she realizes it’s because of a laptop’s glow. “Frankie,” she complains. “You know I hate laptops in the bedroom.”

“Would you make an exception for house-hunting?” Frankie asks. “I’ve got some pretty sweet search criteria going on at Zillow.com.”

“Maybe,” Grace says with a smile. She picks up her glasses from the nightstand and rolls closer, nestles into Frankie, and peers at the screen, which is set to a gallery view of thumbnails. “Okay,” she says carefully, once she’s had time to take it in. “You know, I’m so happy you’re looking at houses. Really. But can I point out that this one has three floors and a spiral staircase that would literally murder me? And it costs four million dollars?”

“Yep, yep, still refining the search terms.”

“It’s also in San Jose.”

“Jesus Christ,” Frankie says, shutting the laptop in frustration. “What good is auto-complete if it doesn’t know we live in San Diego?”

“If we’re going as far as the Bay, might as well try for San Francisco or Oakland,” Grace teases. 

“Babe, you know this is home.”

“I know. We’ll find a good place.”

The small white room is as bright as it’s been dark. They’ll choose a color for the walls of their next bedroom, hang art, buy new sheets for the bed. Start and end each day there, with thousands of little choices in between. Grace sees it clearly, as clearly as she sees this place, this day, Frankie in the space next to hers. She moves Frankie’s laptop aside, pulls the covers back up around them, and when they’re burrowed together Frankie finds her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a song and lyric by Of Montreal.
> 
> Feedback is awesome, including constructive criticism, and I'd love to hear what you think. Thanks so much for reading.


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